A bibliometric approach to the role of author self-citations in scientific communication

Abstract

The present paper analyses the role of author self-citations aiming at finding basic regularities of self-citations within the process of documented scientific communication and thus laying the methodological groundwork for a possible critical view at self-citation patterns in empirical studies at any level of aggregation. The study consists of three parts; the first part of the study is concerned with the comparative analysis of the ageing of self-citations and of non-self citations, in the second part the possible interdependence between self-citations and foreign citations is analysed and in the third part the interrelation of the share of self-citations in all citations with other citation-based indicators is studied. The outcomes of this study are two-fold; first, the results characterise author self-citations - at least at the macro level - as an organic part of the citation process obeying rules that can be measured and described with the help of mathematical models. Second, these rules can be used in evaluative micro and meso analyses to identify significant deviations from the reference standards.